Sprint: No Bonuses This Year, Everyone's Gotta Buckle Down, Except For The Executives

By consumerist.comFebruary 9, 2007

Sprint employee bonuses this year were reduced to nearly zero, while executive pay remained untouched, according to an inside source. The demoralizing effect of this pay cut undoubtedly contributes to the cellphone company’s substandard customer service.

philip:…in our recent all-employee webcast… [Gary Forsee] was very blunt. “These were our goals, we missed them by a lot, we are laying people off, the goals will be stricter, and compensation will be moved to (AND I QUOTE) “somewhere close to 0%”… Can’t say that I like him much. Our all-employee web cast was Gary saying, “Am I the only one who knows what I’m doing?” and he evaded a lot of legitimate concerns in the usual corporate evasion manner.philip: my favorite part [was] the open question session. An employee had the balls to ask…

philip:…”So compensation for specialists and managers is being reduced to somewhere around 0%… despite having less resources and assistance to do more work and achieve higher goals. Will these compensation cuts be the same at the executive level?” I think you might have something about 10,000 Sprint employees who could quote that 30-second piece of heaven verbatim.

5,000 layoffs were announced in January. Sprint is definitely not the happy place to work right now. This makes it even harder to find a sympathetic rep when you call for a billing adjustment. — BEN POPKEN

i am a very happy sprint customer, and have been for 5+ years. i conduct all my questions/concerns via their email customer service system. i spend 5 minutes to write a very politely worded email that details what happened and what i expect them to do. i usually get a response in a few hours (even on the weekend) and its almost always the response i ask for. sometimes i need to clarify the situation some more, but they are always very helpful. i also make sure to send a thank you response and tell them that i am pleased with their service.

maybe im listed as a $$$$$ customer, or the email cs reps have a different set of standards…

ive never had service interruptions or problems in NYC and i find their pricing to be the lowest than any other provider.

I don’t know how Sprint would be able to drop the axe on these moles. It would be exceedingly hard to pinpoint who they are and prove that they were leaking information. Everything that has been posted about Sprint from the moles is pretty general, and would be common knowledge to dozens, hundreds, or even (in this case) thousands of employees.

I’m always enraged by the fact that those people in the company who are the least responsible for it’s downfall, ultimately pay the highest price. All the while, the executives reward themselves regardless of the damage their poor decisions make.

This reminds me of the American Airlines’ executives a couple years back, demanding pay cuts from their employees while at the same time giving themselves bonuses and opening a trust to secure their pensions in case of a bankruptcy.

In the end, we only have the shareholders to blame. They are the ones that allow these scheisters to take advantage of the workers and run the company into the ground while enriching themselves.

I’m in agreement with crayonshinobi. And let’s not forget about Home Depot’s Robert Nardelli. It seems like those companies that produce quality products and offer quality customer service seem to do pretty well. That’s right, I’m looking at you, L.L. Bean and Land’s End

My partner is losing his job here in Vegas (he was one of the Nextel acquired employees) so they can have minimum wage people in Kentucky program your phones now. The whole fulfillment office in Vegas is closing.